I watched her face carefully as we talked. Watched for tears. Watched for tenderness. She hid the hurt well. I can’t blame her.…her parents’ separation.
…the bad test grade.
…the insecurities piling on her little, tan forehead.
I never expected this tutoring thing to break me open like this.
It’s spilling me out in a dirty mess…showing me the mess of my own heart.
It’s breaking my heart over little people and the people that brought them into this world and the pains that fill the broken world we share.
After an hour of pouring out encouragement and lessons and multiplication tables and vocabulary words into her brain, I found myself staring again at her little blond head. And my heart ached.
My heart ached because of the pain she was going through.
My heart ached that I had seen only the dysfunction and not the people to love.
My heart ached because I had withheld my own heart.
I wanted to cry.
To cry for her and with her and over her and over my own brokenness.
And missed opportunities to love sprang to my mind.
And the more I sat there in the afternoon breeze and let my heart love her the more it hurt. I hurt for her and hurt for my own hard heart that had failed to hurt before.
Because love hurts.
Because love can turn a paycheck into a mission field.
Because love shows the beauty in the broken.
Because love breaks you open and makes your heart tender.
Because love makes an easy job a painful job…a heart-wrenching, tear-enducing, prayer-dependent mission.
Love breaks you open for others, for their pains, for their sins.
Because True Love broke His heart and His body for you…for your pains, for your sins.
You can never truly love without breaking open.
And you’re never more like Him than when you’re broken open for others.
But as painful as this breaking open is, I wouldn’t trade it.
Because somehow this little girl, with all her flaws and quirks, that is breaking my heart is making me whole. Because when my heart is breaking for a person or a situation I can’t fix, there’s nowhere else to turn than to the One who broke His body open for me on a cross.
And He doesn’t fix the pain or show me the answer but He promises me that He’s good. And He points me to ways to love and He holds me tight in those painful, beautiful, helpless moments.
And somehow, the breaking is beautiful.
And somehow, as my heart aches and I choke back the tears of this precious, broken little life, I feel broken and whole at the same time, as if in the brokenness, I’ve found my purpose.
My tiny corner of the world doesn’t need me to be a smarter, more professional tutor, it needs me to a broken tutor. It needs me to be a tutor willing to let my heart break over and over and over again for those God has put in my life.
Sister, the world doesn’t need you to be a better, stronger, more confident woman. The world, your bit of it, needs you to be a more broken woman. Willing to be heart broken over the people God’s heart breaks for.
Be blessed
<3
